Riptide Fatigue in Classic Constructed, on a Budget!
Greetings and salutations my fabulous FAB folks! This week I’ve got a personal brew that’s geared towards the looooong game. One of the coolest fatigue heroes in the game has to be Riptide, Lurker of the Deep. The “jolly” green man is literally designed to be defensive, despite starting at a lower life total. With a little careful manipulation of the battlefield, Riptide will have our opponents dangling from his net before they know it!
Without further ado, let’s take a look at my version of Riptide Fatigue.
Why is Riptide a Good Budget Hero?
The thing about Riptide that makes him a good choice for the budget conscious is that, at the moment, the Ranger class hasn’t gotten support in a while. Because of this, we’ve got some great options in the equipment slots. (We’ll get to those in a minute.)
Also, Riptide wants to play a lot of commons because his hero ability cares about triggering trap cards. Even his legendary specialization traps are nice and cheap, making him a good hero to build on a budget.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about what equipment we get to play while decking our opponents out and keeping costs as low as possible.
Budget Riptide Equipment
Unfortunately, the Ranger class is kind of lacking on a headpiece that’s budget friendly. Skullbone Crosswrap and/or New Horizon, while powerful, would eat up a huge chunk of our budget and not leave us any room to work in an actual deck. And truthfully, neither works well for our strategy. We’d rather have a generic headpiece like Crown of Providence if budget weren’t an issue. But then, you’d be reading a different article altogether. Honorable mention to Arcanite Skullcap, but it doesn’t fit in the budget either.
Head/Weapons
So, we’re going to start with something…. cute? I’ll be honest, this was a tough call, but I decided to go with Hope Merchant’s Hood for the head slot. While it doesn’t block, I like the idea of resetting your hand when you desperately need to. The version of the deck we’re playing will have some clunky hands occasionally, so we could do worse than having a free reset button waiting. (Although, not playing any cards on our turn could be a valid turn cycle too, sometimes.)
Our weapon of choice is going to be Dreadbore. We’re trying to squeeze every point of value we can out of our arrows, because, spoiler alert, we’re not playing any pumps, so the extra point from Dreadbore will go a long way towards grinding down the opponent over the long game. Also, the static effect attached to arrows is a nice bonus as it can make our opponent’s hand awkward when they try to block out breakpoints.
Arms, Legs, Chest
Now, here’s where we’re going to spend a little money. Riptide likes traps. Traps are defense reactions. Defense reactions like being played from arsenal. Sometimes, we need to clear the arsenal to fire an arrow. Trench of Sunken Treasure is a steal at about $18 USD as of time of writing, and it’s an all-star at helping keep our arsenal clear when we need to fire off a shot.
Longdraw Half-glove blocks for one and can be worth a total of five points of value when we break it. ‘Nuff said. Perch Grapplers blocks for two and has no other purpose other than saving us some life. Quiver of Abyssal Depths rounds out our equipment package and helps us recycle cards for the long game.
That’s it. That’s all the equipment. Easy enough, right? Pro tip: if you play against a Wizard with this hero/decklist, just go get lunch instead. If that doesn’t worry you too much, the next section features our attack action cards.
Awesome! What Are Some Good Budget Attacks for Riptide?
Let’s start with what arrows we’re going to play. The most obvious one is probably Endless Arrow, since we’re playing a long game strategy and we want to get extra value from our cards when we can. At some point our opponent has to give us cards to block Endless or it’ll never go away. Therefore, it’s obviously a three-of.
Next, we’ve got some disruptive on hit arrows like Hamstring Shot, Sedation Shot, and Fatigue Shot. All of our arrows are going to require two cards to block as long as we load them in with Dreadbore, so again, we’re eating cards from deck.
I’m also including the staple haymakers, Battlefront Bastion and Fyendal's Fighting Spirit. At some point we have to win the game and grinding our opponent down with big breakpoints serves that end. Bastion does a great job blocking daggers (which might be useful with The Hunted coming soon), and we’re likely to have less life than our opponent most of the game, making Fyendal’s extra life point relevant.
Finally, Riptide has a lot of specializations. Murky Water is relatively cheap, but for some reason, Intoxicating Shot is one of the most expensive cards in the deck. I’ve put the full three copies in the list because if our opponent lets it hit, it makes all of our trap cards live during their next turn. Also, it’s blue, blocks for three, and swings for four. Because we want a few extra blues for our haymakers, we’re going to splurge a little here.
Budget Friendly Defensive Options
Now, the meat and potatoes of what a budget Riptide deck should look like: our defensive suite.
Before I started building this list, I had no idea that Fate Foreseen, Sink Below, and Sigil of Solace were as pricey as they are. Unfortunately, my budget conscious readers, they’re also really good. Therefore, three of each sounds like a good starting point for our blocking cards.
The traps are all what you’d probably expect. Basically, all of the playable ones, like Tarpit Trap, Boulder Trap, Frailty Trap, etc. The “spice” is coming from Plan for the Worst and Reel In. Reel In is very situational, but it can dig us into the perfect defense tool when we need it. Plan for the Worst is more recycling and disruption. We want to keep our opponent off of five-card hands as often as possible.
Speaking of recycling though, the most iconic recycling card in the game is coming in as a three-of as well. While Remembrance doesn’t target our trap cards, it does help us keep our threat density up, allowing us to keep grinding the opponent out turn after turn.
With that, I think we’re finally ready for the deck list!
The Final List
Final Thoughts
In every match, the game plan is to just play the pile and play as much Flesh and Blood as possible. Playing Flesh and Blood is fun, right? So it stands to reason that playing MORE Flesh and Blood is more fun! With this budget Riptide deck, you’ll definitely be getting your money’s worth in terms of game time. Just keep your opponents off of five-card hands and have as much fun as you can!
What do you think of the list? Also, how do you feel about fatigue strategies in general? Any suggestions for the next budget hero in the series? Do you want to listen to me and some other nerds talk about Flesh and Blood on our podcast? Let me know at Dracohominis87 on BlueSky, Discord, or Twitter!
Want more Flesh and Blood content? Check out our guide to choosing when to play or draw. Or take a look at our review of the Jarl Vetreidi Armory Deck.
